Earn Your Employees’ Commute: Give Them Choice and Control

Kyle Dunaway

Senior Director, Workplace Technology

Kyle has been in the commercial A/V industry for 15 years. He has served in many roles as both an end-user and integrator, and currently leads Hyphn's Workplace Technology team that specializes in A/V, structured cabling, security, access control and sound masking integration in commercial environments.

I was recently invited to represent Hyphn at Biamp’s global corporate sales conference focused on acoustical privacy and audio experiences in today’s ever-evolving workplace. Biamp is an international industry leader in creating and delivering enhanced professional audio and video for the most natural communications possible, whether in person or remote. 

In addition to Hyphn’s representation of workplace A/V, technology and furniture, the panel of workplace advisors included an architect, an acoustical engineer and a low-voltage contractor who specializes in sound masking. The discussion detailed our experiences designing and implementing hybrid environments, and specifically how to improve open office spaces with privacy enhancement technologies such as sound masking. We brought many different perspectives to the conversation. 

“Open environments'' was the buzz phrase for the panel. While points were made against bringing “glass boxes'' into the office, in this era of hybrid work where the majority of meetings have at least one remote participant, employees can’t be properly supported in wide open spaces with little to no options for speech privacy. I was able to provide my own first-hand experience that the easily installed freestanding pods we’ve deployed in Hyphn’s newly completed design studio have been a game-changer in our employees’ ability to effortlessly transition between collaboration activities and focused, acoustically private work environments. From a design perspective, they add visual interest and variety to the open space, and at the same time allow users to remain connected to the activity around them. For those that remain skeptical, I invite you to Hyphn’s design studio to experience it for yourself! 

If the pandemic did anything positive, it provided an opportunity for us to discover a different way to work. It may have been distressing at first, but as time went on, most of us who had to work from home found ways to optimize our experience, mitigate sensory overload and dial up productivity. We made it a comfortable place where many of us preferred to work. Fast forward to today, employee needs are relatively straightforward: a pleasant if not inspiring place to work, frictionless access to technology, and agency in how they experience their workday. With this in mind, may I propose a nerve-wracking concept for architects, consultants and designers of corporate spaces? Maybe it’s time to give the user more control.

During the panel, I was asked about my thoughts on how to create flexible open spaces that support quick ideation. My response was geared toward mobile, acoustically engineered furniture solutions and sound masking zones that can be easily controlled by the users to create an invisible acoustic boundary around their impromptu work space. 

A fellow panelist rebutted, “do we give users the ability to change the thermostat? We don’t want them to even know sound masking exists!” I understand this perspective; years ago it was my own. Today, I couldn’t disagree more. I was proud to explain how at Hyphn we’ve placed control knobs in each of our conference rooms to allow users to amplify and attenuate sound masking in the room as they need. No reason to involve IT or facilities to assist. To the audience’s astonishment, we’ve had exactly zero issues in the four months since we’ve made this decision. I believe that a big part of earning the commute is providing the right tools, technologies and choices, and trusting your employees with control over their work experience.